beneath the looking glass

Great Battery Roundup 2021, Dive 3

We were able to remove not 6 but 8 batteries from the debris of the Honeybear wreckage in cove 2. All 8 are now up in the freshwater lens intertidal zone in preparation to be moved up into the shallow shallows on one of our king tides and then removed from the water and taken to Seattle Iron and Metals corporation (SIMCO) recycling facility. Looking at the tides we should be able to manage that…

Great Battery Round up 2021, Dive 2

First Battery removed from the debris field of the “Honeybear” wreckage in Cove 2 in West Seattle

Great Battery Round up 2021, dive 1

cove 2, the wreck of the honeybear has degraded enough to expose its battery banks. On this dive we worked to remove the leftover decking so as to expose all the batteries (that we have found so far) and prepare them for removal.

Crosseyes and ‘you’re a dev now’?

Suck it up buttercup, you’re in dev space now….

??????

“Well you said you wanted to learn unity and working in unity changes your category. you are no longer a mere 360 shooter and video editor, you are a dev.” When the tutorials are for older builds or the newest build introduces a whole host of bugs I have ZERO idea how to work with, that is considered “par for the course”

Lets…

Vertical (3D) Mouse for

yeah yeah… to some of you this is gonna be a case of ‘I told you so’, and I’m 100% ok with that.

As I’ve shifted to more complex 360 and 3D work, I’ve found I’m on the computer even more than before. With general flat editing I’ve never had an issue, but all the very fine grain movements fixing avatar mesh etc started aggravating my thumb/indexfinger pinching arthritis. I know what this is,…

Camera foibles, C100, Data import utility

Once in a while, even though I’m mostly competent, I mess up. This time the learning that occurred might help “the rest of you” as well. I’m taking a moment to write this up because it has to do with legacy hardware that I’m 100% sure a number of people are still shooting with (I can’t be the only poor bugger)

Todays adventure was caused by the ever ominous state change on the same card.…

Stereo180 Underwater: a return to our roots with an added bonus

The idea of stereo180 for the underwater world could be considered a bit counterintuitive. The whole discussion of 360 video for the a truly immersive experience would lead the causal observer to question the logic of cutting your sphere in half, because, isn’t it the full sphere that gives you that “as close as possible to diving without getting wet” experience?

All of this is true, but it is…

shooting better footage with your new consumer underwater 360 camera part 1

Life is an iterative process, and filmmaking at any level is a microcosms of life in general.  

My latest example of ‘live and learn’ has been my continued learning with regards to the Insta360 One X. (Previous review here) 

I stand by my statement of this system being the best consumer underwater 360 kit currently available in it’s price range

Once you have it in hand though, there are some ways…

Insta360 One X + Dive Housing

TL:DR – Insta360 One X in their purpose built dive housing is a great option for consumer underwater 360. Yes the housing base is hugely visible in the nadir, but even so I’d consider it the best consumer grade offering on the market at the time of writing.

Generally speaking I’m not the biggest ‘early adopter’. This may seem counterintuitive given my penchant for 360 video. What I mean by is…

I recently had the opportunity to dive and film with the OrcaTorch 900n underwater dive light. This dive light has 3 colors, a bright white setting with wide beam for videos and photos, Red for sneaking up on your favorite subjects and blue for capturing. UV fluorescence

Build quality on this light is solid. With a depth rating of 150m it can go deeper than you want to go. It has a good button…

Dives Around the World in #360 from Laura James on Vimeo.

Dives Around the World in #360 from Laura James on Vimeo.

The more things change

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

One of the first groups in filmmaking to push back on 360 video happened to be directors.  Filmmakers who  pride themselves on being able to tell exquisite visual stories and do not want the audience messing it up by looking around. 

We (the evangelists) pooh pooh’d this and said “if we create visually compelling imagery, the audience is hard…